Day: December 16, 2018

I really can not believe how dumb I was on all the previous attempts to make the perfect malted cookie. I could not understand why they all were so hard to bite into. So I googled “what makes cookies hard to bite into?” And the answer was too much flour….not enough wet ingredients. And of course I knew I was doing everything right, in fact doing it “right” over and over again.

So after my malt extract arrived I tried it again. This time no Carnation Malted Milk Powder.

That extract is sooo good, very thick and very sticky.

So I following my recipe AGAIN and when it comes to the softened butter part I realize that for some unknown reason I was thinking one stick was a full cup….so was very careful to use only 3/4 of it when the recipe called for 3/4 cup of softened butter. It must have been forever since I actually baked something calling for butter! So I corrected my mistake but still kept the lesser amount of flour that I thought was a good idea.

Here they are slammed:

And here the next sheet is “unslammed.”

And forget “crispy”. These are very gooey and soft. BUT flavor is close to what I wanted. No molasses added this time and a healthy mix of both the golden syrup and malt extract.

Now to try it again with the increased flour and a good slam. I swear when I get it right it will be the last time you have to look at cookies on this blog.

In the meantime I finished the latest Cormoran Strike novel by Robert Galbraith, aka J. K. Rowling. It was very hard to follow as there were so many characters and I thought a lot of them could have been killed off earlier.

Then I went on to Louise Penny’s latest Inspector Gamache novel and devoured it. I have admired how she could write while caring for a husband with dementia and now that he is gone, she can continue when she thought the stories would end with his passing.

And now to try to keep myself entertained because for some reason I am not doing anything in the studio but stitching, I have started Dianne Setterfield’s new book, Once Upon a River. I really loved her twists and turns of The Thirteenth Tale a few years ago and am enjoying this one as well.

Lee is absorbed in a football game and I have Lyle Lovett channel on Pandora in the studio. Now I will go back to stitching in there or better yet, go try to get the ingredients right for the malted cookies.